Confusion and Anxiety

Lately, I’ve been working with Dickens ‘Great Expectations’; a famous 19th century novel about a young boy’s vain attempts to become an aristocrat with neither hard work nor source of income, based on self-delusions and false expectations. I’ve been thinking about Pip’s great expectations and ironically I was able to make parallelisms to other people’s lives. How many times have we seen, even in our most ridiculous plans a failure, because of either a simple and diversified stream of luck, emotions, opinions or situations.

The thing is that like in Pip’s case, in what is new that is about to unfold into our future has no real background or personal experience and we tend to stand up with an appropriate enthusiasm or an unnecessary negativity. What if it fails? It doesn’t matter because we will need to move on. We fail when we forget that we are subject to our environment; when we forget that reactions flow in a sort of butterfly effect. We succeed when we work towards our goals with persistence and clarity, irrespective of the difficulties; when we believe in ourselves and be clear with what we want to achieve. It’s important to understand that this journey is in search of what we consider to be of essence. We are born with notions of truth, desires and inner life plans that we need to decrypt.

How many ‘convicts’ have we come across and how many times have we blamed a single decision for the consequences? How many times have we had false impressions about people and situations and how many times have these false impressions been haunting us for years? It’s unavoidable without proper guidance to retain an ideal perspective for certain events. How many times have we idealized that someone as a friend, as a lover, as a parent or as a teacher before he/she turns out to be unworthy of attention? This process sub-consciously becomes a negative catalyst preventing us from actions and reactions that would otherwise be considered as the right ones.

A child almost drowned when he/she was five and have never been able to get over this fear of the water; another was attacked by a dog and he/she is still cautious and scared the shit out of them; another was beaten up so badly by his/her parents that lost confidence and trust to people. I guess I could number a huge list using examples such as the ones mentioned above.

These thoughts came up when I realized that circumstances have actually turned everything upside down. My disappointment is clearly temporary and for a few days, it mentally threw me to the bottom of an imaginary well, in which I struggled to succeed a way back to the top. I’m being subjective by the way; nothing of this is real. I do not have a famous story here, neither Dickens talent, but my inner most expectations seem to have been betrayed for a delusion of good faith. Because of its temporality I knew that life would change course. It’s only natural to experience moments in one way and then, somehow manage to retreat, step back and review from a different angle into a new perspective for clearance, and provision for incentives to carry on in a different path.

However, this is how it felt for a few days.

My thoughts became dark one night, lost in vagueness and melancholy I started wondering whether I’ve been doing something wrong and things get worked up this way. It’s all in my mind though. I get so obsessed some times that I’m even willing to underestimate my own value to justify my inconsistencies. Pathetic! You have to understand that this could be nothing more than illusion. I wondered whether I’m being prejudiced about contemporary way of life or is it just that my expectations collide with those of others.

No, I shouldn’t have dark moods. Life goes pretty well actually. I have a pretty good job, earn some good money, and have lots of friends, good friends; I can definitely say that I know my way in and out of situations. But, these thoughts and moods often run out of control. I feel that they’re choking me. They drain my energy and leave me with only a drop, and a weak breadth, enough to sustain my vital organs. I am trying to calm myself down in order to sort these thoughts and pictures out and get some basic logic out of them. The other night I was reading a text in my dreams and I wondered how could it be possible to remember such a text while I’m asleep, a text whose words had a meaning but the whole of it none.

This is a kind of repeated scenario. I am sitting on the couch; I close my eyes and find myself locked up in a room with a small window facing an empty grey landscape; the raindrops dash down like fire bullets crushing down the rocks, drilling the hardest grounds but the window seems to be bulletproof, impenetrable, and I feel the room’s weight on my chest. I sit in the corner across the window and watch the rain hit on the glass but there are no signs of drops on the window; they don’t make a sound on contact, no mist or drips rolling down as if a spell’s erasing them all.

There’s a girl walking out in the rain; I rush to the window, I wave my hands and shout. ‘Hey, in here’ but she never looks this way.

But then, I find myself to a different scene; I’m in a fight; a guy’s holding my arms behind my back, another’s punching me in the face and then he rests for a while; another one’s taking his place. He is carving circles on my chest with the tip of his Swedish knife and I start crying; I don’t feel the pain though.

‘I just wanted to talk to you’, I say. My blood’s boiling within my swelled veins, my pulse fastening and even though this is just a false image in my head, my heart bleeds with an untraceable anxiety and anger. And I don’t seem able to control it but neither to express it. I don’t want to think about it, I want to make it stop and go away.

I see a figure behind those men. I think it’s her. She is watching while I’m being beaten up. She doesn’t move, she doesn’t speak, she doesn’t laugh or cry; she’s just standing there. Why doesn’t she do something about it?

I shouldn’t expect that, I have to do it on my own.

I wish I could light a cigarette right now.

It’s that room again but now it’s furnished. I’m back on the couch; my back is hurting me; my hands are shaking. The laptop’s by my side. This is what I have to do. Write it down!